Amphibious, in water it was propulsed by the movement of the tracks at up to 4.5 km/h. At 16 tonnes combat weight, the Bronco had a payload of 4 tonnes, the mobility on soft terrain being ensured by the low specific ground pressure provided by the wide rubber tracks and of course by the vehicle’s architecture, which made it a tracked 4×4. The twin chassis articulated vehicle featured four rubber tracks provided by Soucy of Canada, and was powered by a Caterpillar C7 engine providing 350 hp, coupled to an Allison MD 3500 fully automatic transmission. When in the late 1990s the Singapore Army expressed the need for an articulated all-terrain vehicle, then Singapore Technologies Kinetics (ST Kinetics) in cooperation with Singapore’s Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA), developed the Bronco, the first of over 600 vehicles having been delivered in mid-2001. Steering is quite different from wheeled and tracked vehicles: here the steering is provided by the angle made by the front and rear wagon, but it is pretty easy to adapt to this type of feeling, the number of turns that the small wheel has to do to do steep turns being quite high, the trick to return to the neutral position being to count the turns of the wheel, so that once the turn is finished it is sufficient to turn the other way for the same number of turns and the two wagons are back to alignment. Once pushed the brake pedal to free the hand brake and put the automatic transmission on “Drive”, it is sufficient to push the right pedal to get the vehicle on the move, the MAN Mercedes diesel engine providing 325 hp accelerating the 10.2 tonnes kerb weight Bronco, which today has quite a light payload on board but that can reach up to 16.5 tonnes, with a growth potential up to 18 tonnes. “We have to make it simple to train them and to reduce the sustainment footprint,” he adds, and being at the wheel of the Bronco 3, the last born of the articulated all terrain vehicles family born in Singapore, confirms this. “When in the 1960s Singapore became independent it had no Armed Forces and no industry, so we had to create both, conscript forces being raised while the defence industry support was provided by Chartered Industries of Singapore, the ancestor of today ST Engineering,” Dominic Phoon, Vice-President and Product Director at ST Engineering Land Systems explains to a small group of specialised journalist gathered at Ivalo Test World, the company part of the Millbrook Group, based in northern Finland and specialised in tyre and vehicle winter testing.

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